At present, facsimile apparatuses are also widespread in homes owing to miniaturization of a reading apparatus and a recording apparatus. FIG. 16 is a vertical sectional view of a center portion of a conventional facsimile apparatus. FIG. 17 is a plan view of an operation unit of the conventional facsimile apparatus. In the home-use facsimile apparatus, from the viewpoints of compactness of an apparatus main body, inserting performance of a document or recording paper, and operability of the ejected document or recording paper, as shown in FIG. 16, with respect to the document, generally, a document inserting port 201 is arranged in an upper portion of the main body and a document ejecting port 202 is arranged in a front position of the main body. With respect to the recording paper, generally, a recording paper inserting port 203 is arranged in the upper portion of the main body, a recording paper ejecting port 204 is arranged in the front position of the main body or both the recording paper inserting port and the recording paper ejecting port are arranged in the upper portion of the main body. That is, a construction in which both the document inserting port and the recording paper inserting port are arranged in the upper portion of the main body is often used. Also from a viewpoint of the operability, generally, an operation panel 205 is also is arranged in the upper front position of the main body as shown in FIG. 16 and the operation panel 205 is formed in a proper slant shape (inclined shape) by setting its front side to be lower than the rear side.
In the facsimile apparatus, various buttons such as numeral buttons, other buttons, and the like are arranged on the operation panel 205. In the home-use facsimile apparatus, for example, as shown in FIG. 17, in addition to a numeral button group 206, a number of buttons such as button group 207 concerning an auto answer-phone, button group 208 concerning a telephone directory, other functional button group 209, and the like are necessary. Therefore, in such a facsimile apparatus, compatibility of contradictory performance between the realization of the compactness of the apparatus main body by reducing a size of operation panel itself and the realization of a layout in which a number of buttons can be easily used is demanded.
Further, in recent years, a display unit having a large area for applications such as transmission and reception of E-mail, Web browsing, display to confirm a received image, and the like has been requested. For this purpose, the large display unit has to be arranged in addition to a number of buttons. It is more difficult to satisfy the compatibility between the compactness of the operation panel and the operability. To realize the compatibility between the compactness and the operability, for example, a construction in which an area where a number of buttons are arranged (layout) is assured by arranging the display unit 210 in a slightly upper position of the operation panel 205 as shown in FIG. 17 has been proposed.
However, in the facsimile apparatus, since a part of the document inserting port 201 and the recording paper inserting port 203 arranged behind the operation panel in the upper portion of the main body are hidden from the user by the display unit 210, there is such inconvenience that the operability upon inserting the document or the recording paper deteriorates. If the display unit 210 is arranged in the button layout area on the operation panel in order to improve the operability upon inserting the document or the recording paper, the area for arranging a number of buttons decreases, so that the operability of the buttons deteriorates. If the inserting operability of the document or the recording paper is improved by arranging the document inserting port 201 and the recording paper inserting port 203 so as to be sufficiently apart from the display unit 210, the compactness of the apparatus main body is lost.